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Cisco Duo vs UserLock comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 29, 2026

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Cisco Duo
Ranking in Authentication Systems
2nd
Ranking in Access Management
5th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
163
Ranking in other categories
Single Sign-On (SSO) (5th), ZTNA as a Service (2nd), Cisco Security Portfolio (1st), Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) (1st), AI Data Analysis (7th)
UserLock
Ranking in Authentication Systems
29th
Ranking in Access Management
34th
Average Rating
10.0
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Authentication Systems category, the mindshare of Cisco Duo is 3.7%, down from 7.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of UserLock is 1.1%, up from 1.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Authentication Systems Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cisco Duo3.7%
UserLock1.1%
Other95.2%
Authentication Systems
 

Featured Reviews

Charles Slaustas - PeerSpot reviewer
Information Technology Contractor at Insight global
Supports seamless authentication for users across multiple organizations and personal portals
The features I use in Cisco Duo include Duo Pushes to confirm my identity to the device, and eventually as MFA security was increased, I actually had to use exchange passcodes. Sometimes, I have to go into the site and get into Cisco Duo to retrieve the passcode, and many of them have been two-factor, where the sites send a passcode that I have to enter into Cisco Duo. It has been more of the latter. I have not seen issues with lagging or crashing on Cisco Duo's end; it was usually on the client end, often because someone set up a bad upgrade or there were connection issues with the Cisco Duo cloud through the administrative site.
it_user1816350 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Manager at Xcel Mechanical Systems
The user login insights are helpful
We needed a simple solution to enable admin multi-factor authentication on our internal Windows network, and a consultant recommended UserLock because he had previously implemented it at another company. UserLock also monitors logins on all tracked devices, telling you if the sign-in was successful…

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The feature I like the most about Cisco Duo is that it allows us to authenticate users before they can connect to our network from outside of our company."
"Cisco Duo has helped my organization reduce its overall authentication-related costs."
"Cisco Duo helps minimize the risk of attack vectors and prevents unauthorized access to our data since it's tied with multi-factor authentication, which helps block threats."
"With Cisco Duo it's checking if you are allowed to submit a request to access this, doing a complete check of you before you access, instead of being just a simple MFA that only asks if you can go in or not."
"The features of Cisco Duo that I like the most are the simplicity, and the benefits of these features to my organization include security components and security authentication components."
"The single pane of glass management is very important and it is part of the reason we went with Duo, and anything we can do to save time for our administrators, help desk staff, and engineers, is valuable to us."
"It's easy to use for the security part, and it helps to improve our security posture."
"Compared to Cisco, the general support I experience is fantastic; I have no complaints about it."
"We mainly implemented UserLock for multi-factor authentication, but the user login insights are also nice."
"The most valuable features are two-factor authentication and real-time logon monitoring."
"It is affordable, integrates easily with Active Directory, and is simple to install and maintain."
"UserLock was pretty easy to set up and simple to use, and the documentation covered everything."
 

Cons

"With Cisco Duo, you have to do that, and customers complain about that process. At some point, you need to be technically savvy to understand how to use Cisco Duo."
"Cisco Duo can be improved by integration into Security Cloud Control, which would be a significant advantage."
"Cisco Duo could be improved if there were a way to make two-factor authentication quicker."
"I would appreciate it if Duo Security could improve its integrations with Windows Hello."
"I would like to see Duo Security increase the time that the users have to log into the devices. The maximum time interval is 50 minutes at the moment, and I would like it to be 60 minutes. When you try to log into a device and have to authenticate yourself, sometimes it's not very pleasant. It's not the best thing particularly if you have to do this every 50 minutes, which is the maximum time that Duo gives. This makes it difficult to use and does not save time."
"End-users find it more annoying than anything else."
"There is another issue with removing the application from your computer. It is difficult to remove the application on Windows."
"For a non-prepared, non-technical user, it could be tricky and quite complex."
"I would like to see UserLock add the ability to automatically create a group policy in Active Directory. That might streamline the setup process."
"The product and service are already great as it is but if I could add one feature, I guess it would be nice to have another factor of authentication (two additional factors) like your phone and a token for example, for when people forget their phone at home."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Price-wise, the solution has been very, very reasonable...Licensing is the last thing I think about Duo Security because it's so easy, and I had no problems with it."
"I rate the product pricing a seven out of ten."
"It is affordable for what's coming to the table with it, but in this day and age, the cost is looked at under a microscope, and companies need to very finely define what is needed versus what is critical. In some cases, it might not be cost-effective for a company to have it. In a lot of other cases, it is the cost of doing business."
"I am not aware of the pricing. There are two departments, and I don't have any information about them."
"Cisco has the most expensive products because market leaders tend to charge a lot."
"Duo Security's pricing is good, fair, and very comparable to today's market."
"Their pricing model is a little bit weird. Currently, there is no price advantage in signing up for yearly contracts. There are no additional costs to the standard licensing costs."
"My experience with the pricing, setup cost, and licensing of Cisco Duo has been great. We've been there for 10 years. While we haven't gone through the setup part for a while, licensing is straightforward and convenient for higher education because student populations are included. So, we don't have to pay extra for it. We just pay for our knowledge workers, which has been great, and the cost is reasonable."
"You will be hard-pressed to find better pricing."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
19%
Construction Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Outsourcing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business64
Midsize Enterprise28
Large Enterprise82
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

How does Duo Security compare with Microsoft Authenticator?
We switched to Duo Security for identity verification. We’d been using a competitor but got the chance to evaluate Duo for 30 days, and we could not be happier. Duo Security is easy to configure a...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Duo Security?
Regarding the pricing, what actually happened was that we got the product purchased through our HQ, so the costing aspect and all those things sit with our HQ. I do not have much information in ter...
What needs improvement with Duo Security?
I do not have a straight answer for how Cisco Duo can be improved at this time. With the implementation that we are going through right now, I was asking a question about how we can use Cisco Duo o...
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
 

Also Known As

Duo Security
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Barclays, US Department of Justice, National Bank of Kuwait, Turkish Aerospace, New York Albany School District, Regtransfers, University of Kent, Camden City School District, Oklahoma City Public Schools, Bank of Cyprus, Detran-PE: Pernambuco State Traffic Department
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Duo vs. UserLock and other solutions. Updated: October 2026.
920,769 professionals have used our research since 2012.